Looks like they are removing stalks from the 3/Y

[danarcha]

Everyone is so afraid and against change

Yep, especially those of us driving around in fricking electric cars!

 

[smogne41]

Very overdramatic.


Yoke and no stalks is great and easy to use.


Everyone is so afraid and against change

No, some of us are just against dumb change...

 

[DayTrippin]

I am all for a change where there is an actual improvement. Change for change's sake gets me nothing.

As for someone who thinks the stalks are fine, let me take you on my normal commute and let me know how comfortable you feel pulling out into a blind intersection during rush hour, when you can only see a car about 40-50' away that is doing 35 mph. That gives you less than a second to identify the threat, find and engage reverse and back up.

Let me break down the math for you. At 35 mph that is ~51 ft/sec. Let's be generous and say the oncoming traffic is 50' away and coming from the left. That gives you less than a second to identify the threat, engage reverse and back up enough to not get hit. To get that 50' of oncoming view, the nose of your S will need to be about midway into the lane to have a chance to even see the car.

Given typical reaction time is 0.75 seconds, that gives you less than 0.25 seconds to find reverse, engage, back up at least 5', while making keeping your eyes on the road and maintaining situational awareness. I don't think there is a single person on this forum that could do that with the gearshift controls of the S. I can do it in my sleep with my 3. I encounter this situation multiple times a day when I leave my house unless I want to drive way around my neighborhood. I can't tell you how many times I've almost been clipped because I didn't have time to reverse and my only option was to accelerate very hard and commit to getting in front of the traffic. So yes Tesla, stupid effing idea to remove the stalks and put in a much more dangerous alternative.

 

[stopcrazypp]

I am all for a change where there is an actual improvement. Change for change's sake gets me nothing.

As for someone who thinks the stalks are fine, let me take you on my normal commute and let me know how comfortable you feel pulling out into a blind intersection during rush hour, when you can only see a car about 40-50' away that is doing 35 mph. That gives you less than a second to identify the threat, find and engage reverse and back up.

Let me break down the math for you. At 35 mph that is ~51 ft/sec. Let's be generous and say the oncoming traffic is 50' away and coming from the left. That gives you less than a second to identify the threat, engage reverse and back up enough to not get hit. To get that 50' of oncoming view, the nose of your S will need to be about midway into the lane to have a chance to even see the car.

Given typical reaction time is 0.75 seconds, that give you less than 0.25 seconds to find reverse, engage, back up at least 5', while making keeping your eyes on the road and maintaining situational awareness. I don't think there is a single person on this forum that could do that with the gearshift controls of the S. I can do it in my sleep with my 3. I encounter this situation multiple times a day when I leave my house unless I want to drive way around my neighborhood. I can't tell you how many times I've almost been clipped because I didn't have time to reverse and my only option was to accelerate very hard and commit to getting in front of the traffic. So yes Tesla, stupid effing idea to remove the stalks and put in a much more dangerous alternative.

That seems like a very narrow use case that few people would have. I'm having a hard time picturing it myself, a use case where shifting into reverse rapidly would be a life and death situation. For most people putting the car into reverse is a slow process, which is why most cars have the car operate much slower when in reverse. Although if you have such a demand, obviously the stalkless design is not for you.

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

How about the common supermarket parking lot situation where you rapidly switch between D/R a bunch of times as pedestrians weave around you. Having a backwards shifter with no tactile feedback seems like a probable cause of injury.

Recall that Fiat was forced to recall a million cars and faced class-action lawsuits for making a shifter that is fundamentally identical to the current Model 3/Y stalk system because it was deemed "backwards" and devoid of tactile feedback or sounds. Imagine how easy it'll be to sue Tesla for making a shifter even more backwards and genuinely devoid of tactile feedback. That's why they added the default-on shifting sounds to all cars a few weeks ago - that bleep/bloop is going to be their entire legal defense.

FCA's Dangerous Gear Shifter Defect - TheLemonFirm.com

Our Los Angeles lemon law attorney discusses the dangerous gear shifter defect in FCA cars. Contact TheLemonFirm.com today for a free consultation.

thelemonfirm.com

 

[DayTrippin]

That seems like a very narrow use case that few people would have. I'm having a hard time picturing it myself, a use case where shifting into reverse rapidly would be a life and death situation. For most people putting the car into reverse is a slow process, which is why most cars have the car operate much slower when in reverse. Although if you have such a demand, obviously the stalkless design is not for you.

It is a real one that I encounter every day. Lots of people deal with it here. I am not the only one. Basically any blind intersection can present this challenge. Or maybe back to avoid a pedestrian in a cross walk.

Let me give you another scenario where the gearshift sucks as well. Ever tried to rock your car in snow to get unstuck? Yep, this gearshift setup is a total cluster here as well.

In general, you should be able to change your gears purely in a tactile way and without taking your eyes off the road to find the mechanism. Again, Tesla total fails in this area as well. What improvements did we as the end user of this atrocious design choice receive? Absolutely nothing based on my thousands of miles driving with this cluster truck of a UI. Sure, it saved Tesla some money and maybe to some it looks cool, but it is an absolutely horrid design choice. Not to mention the screwed up choice for horn actuation.

 

[stopcrazypp]

How about the common supermarket parking lot situation where you rapidly switch between D/R a bunch of times as pedestrians weave around you. Having a backwards shifter with no tactile feedback seems like a probable cause of injury.

In a parking lot, it's an annoyance, not a real safety issue. When the car is moving slowly, it's not difficult to confirm the gear the car is in visually either with the screen or by observing/feeling which direction the car is moving, while still having plenty of reaction time available to respond if it's not going the direction you want it to go.

Recall that Fiat was forced to recall a million cars and faced class-action lawsuits for making a shifter that is fundamentally identical to the current Model 3/Y stalk system because it was deemed "backwards" and devoid of tactile feedback or sounds. Imagine how easy it'll be to sue Tesla for making a shifter even more backwards and genuinely devoid of tactile feedback. That's why they added the default-on shifting sounds to all cars a few weeks ago - that bleep/bloop is going to be their entire legal defense.

FCA's Dangerous Gear Shifter Defect - TheLemonFirm.com

Our Los Angeles lemon law attorney discusses the dangerous gear shifter defect in FCA cars. Contact TheLemonFirm.com today for a free consultation.

thelemonfirm.com

The article only details actual defects related to the car where people thought the car was in park when it is not. It details no concrete safety issues with reverse. Tesla addresses that rollaway problem with how their cars automatically put the car into park. FCA later recalled the cars to address the rollaway issue, but never did any changes to the monostable shifter in the recall (they just added an autopark feature similar to Tesla's), and neither did NHTSA suggest it was a problem they needed to fix.

If you look around a bit, FCA won the lawsuit and the monostable shifter was deemed not defective:
FCA Gear Shift Litigation: Jury Sides With Chrysler

There's still a fairly big gap between unsafe and annoying. The column shifter actually is an example, given plenty of people are not used to that, as are monostable turn signals (which plenty of premium cars use).

 

[stopcrazypp]

It is a real one that I encounter every day. Lots of people deal with it here. I am not the only one. Basically any blind intersection can present this challenge. Or maybe back to avoid a pedestrian in a cross walk.

But you aren't talking only about the need to throw the car into reverse, but the need to do so in a split second where failing to do so would mean the difference between a collision or not. Most blind intersections that people are used to (like I am) are flanked by sidewalks, so you have space to creep into slowly without ever needing to reverse in a rapid fashion to avoid a collision.

The pedestrian in crosswalk you have plenty of time to back up, so it's an annoyance, not a safety issue.

Let me give you another scenario where the gearshift sucks as well. Ever tried to rock your car in snow to get unstuck? Yep, this gearshift setup is a total cluster here as well.

In general, you should be able to change your gears purely in a tactile way and without taking your eyes off the road to find the mechanism. Again, Tesla total fails in this area as well. What improvements did we as the end user of this atrocious design choice receive? Absolutely nothing based on my thousands of miles driving with this cluster truck of a UI. Sure, it saved Tesla some money and maybe to some it looks cool, but it is an absolutely horrid design choice. Not to mention the screwed up choice for horn actuation.

Yes having tactile feedback is the ideal situation, but we have plenty of interfaces where we have moved away from that. The rise of the touchscreen pretty much killed a lot of tactile feedback interfaces. I grew up using phones with buttons, but the current generation grew up never using any type of phone other than with a touchscreen.

 

[DayTrippin]

There are a lot of these "blind" or limited visibility situations in Dallas. My most challenging one is the one I described. You have the stop sign, then past that is the cross walk, then you have a row of parked car that go all the up to basically one empty space before the other side of the road. To see the oncoming traffic from the left, you have to go through the crosswalk, and get your nose past the bumper of typically some gigantic SUV or pickup. It is dicey as hell to enter this intersection. I am always trying to turn right there and go with the flow of the traffic from the left. Reversely quickly is really not much of an option with the S.

I encountered a very challenging situation at a hotel where I dropped my wife off for a conference. There were a tall row of bushes obscuring your view of oncoming traffic from the left. The street is narrow so to see any oncoming traffic, once again you have the nose of the car out into the traffic lane.

Once again no tangible user benefit for the removal of stalks. I am not married to the stalks. I don't care what you use for a gear change mechanism as long as it is responsive, I can engage it without taking my eyes of the road, and some tactile or auditory feedback to let me know I've engage the gear so to speak.

I grew driving/piloting all manner of vehicles and normal there was a method to their madness. No problem with bulldozers, skid loaders, tractors, dump truck, combines, buses, snowplows, cars, motorcycles, boats, hovercraft, planes, etc. There was a valid reason whey their controls worked they way they did usually with some benefit. I just to love our old tractors where you had the independent brakes for each wheel and foot pedal for each. You could basically work them as a traction control device or just brake one wheel and get the tractor to pivot very tightly.

If Tesla had given something that had parity with the stalks with respect to usability, I'd have adapted and moved on. They didn't. Every day I am reminded what a terrible design choice this was.

I'll add another scenario I just saw play out where the gear shift mechanism likely would have resulted in damage to your car. A person was exiting a parking garage. They paid, the massive gate arm came up, just as they started to pull through it, it started coming down. They slammed the car in reverse and were able to back up in time without their car getting smashed by the arm. I probably have seen that situation play out several times in the last year. My 3 was almost hit exiting DFW airport.

I can categorically tell you I will never buy another Tesla if they keep the same gear shift mechanism going forward without substantial improvements. It is one of those situations where it isn't an issue until it is. Just like the yoke in an emergency situation. Put a Tesla engineer in my neighborhood and drive around a while so they can eat their own dog food. I'll reserve judgment on the 3/Y stalk removal to see if they learned from the cluster truck implementation on the S.

 

[Earl]

Very overdramatic.


Yoke and no stalks is great and easy to use.


Everyone is so afraid and against change

Good knowing it appeals to some. Thanks for balancing this discussion. The issue is not whether some like or some don't or even which is more possible but, rather, are there enough people who like a particular option and are willing to pay for it to make it worth offering.
Car design is a compromise between many, often conflicting, preferences and priorities.
I, for one, am not afraid or against change but there are some who are. I respect Tesla and Tesla owners for taking chances on new things.

 

[LiamPope]

I'm kinda amused that the best even the fanboys can say about this is 'oh come on, it's not dangerous, it's just annoying'!

Fact is column stalks have proven to be an absolutely excellent driver input device for essential controls like indicating, lighting, wipers, even gear selection and cruise/AP modes! That's why they are practically universal on modern automobiles. While I tend to agree that moving all that to either touch buttons on the wheel or to a centre touchscreen isn't dangerous - I do think that is an exaggeration - it sure as hell isn't an improvement over stalks! It isn't even good. It's rubbish. And the sooner Tesla realise that, by hemorrhaging enough customers, the better.

My guess is they intend to reintroduce them, but they're just waiting for Elon to come up with a new name for them so he can claim he invented them himself! How about Hyper-sticks?

 

[heavyD]

There's still a fairly big gap between unsafe and annoying. The column shifter actually is an example, given plenty of people are not used to that, as are monostable turn signals (which plenty of premium cars use).

To be clear when you say plenty of premium cars use, you mean BMW and they dropped it last decade because drivers hated it.

 

[Brou]

I'm kinda amused that the best even the fanboys can say about this is 'oh come on, it's not dangerous, it's just annoying'!

Fact is column stalks have proven to be an absolutely excellent driver input device for essential controls like indicating, lighting, wipers, even gear selection and cruise/AP modes! That's why they are practically universal on modern automobiles. While I tend to agree that moving all that to either touch buttons on the wheel or to a centre touchscreen isn't dangerous - I do think that is an exaggeration - it sure as hell isn't an improvement over stalks! It isn't even good. It's rubbish. And the sooner Tesla realise that, by hemorrhaging enough customers, the better.

My guess is they intend to reintroduce them, but they're just waiting for Elon to come up with a new name for them so he can claim he invented them himself! How about Hyper-sticks?

Giga-swipes.

 

[3sr+buyer]

To be clear when you say plenty of premium cars use, you mean BMW and they dropped it last decade because drivers hated it.

I have driven someone else's Lexus GS that had monostable turn signals, so it was not just a BMW thing.

 

[Brou]

I have driven someone else's Lexus GS that had monostable turn signals, so it was not just a BMW thing.

Lexus GS was discontinued 5 years ago. Not exactly a great example for others to follow.

 

[stopcrazypp]

I have driven someone else's Lexus GS that had monostable turn signals, so it was not just a BMW thing.

Alfa Guias have it too. I'm sure there are plenty other examples if you dig. It's not so big a deal that people would necessarily point it out however.

 

[stopcrazypp]

I'm kinda amused that the best even the fanboys can say about this is 'oh come on, it's not dangerous, it's just annoying'!

Fact is column stalks have proven to be an absolutely excellent driver input device for essential controls like indicating, lighting, wipers, even gear selection and cruise/AP modes! That's why they are practically universal on modern automobiles. While I tend to agree that moving all that to either touch buttons on the wheel or to a centre touchscreen isn't dangerous - I do think that is an exaggeration - it sure as hell isn't an improvement over stalks! It isn't even good. It's rubbish. And the sooner Tesla realise that, by hemorrhaging enough customers, the better.

My guess is they intend to reintroduce them, but they're just waiting for Elon to come up with a new name for them so he can claim he invented them himself! How about Hyper-sticks?

I'm not a fan of the stalkless design though, I haven't even used it, so my opinion is certainly not the "best" that can be said about the system. I just fail to see how it is as dangerous as they are implied to be or stalks as necessary as people make it out to be). There are others shortly up thread that love the stalkless system and feel autoshift is an improvement over the stalk version, so that would more accurately present the "best" side of the argument.

 

[Kevy Baby]

Very overdramatic.

Yoke and no stalks is great and easy to use.

Everyone is so afraid and against change

While much of the "safety" arguments may be hyperbole, people's CHOICES are very valid.

"I'm okay with something, so everyone else must be idiots for not liking it."

 

[Kevy Baby]

As for someone who thinks the stalks are fine, let me take you on my normal commute and let me know how comfortable you feel pulling out into a blind intersection during rush hour, when you can only see a car about 40-50' away that is doing 35 mph. That gives you less than a second to identify the threat, find and engage reverse and back up.

I'm sorry, but this is some really heavy-duty FUD.

I have close to 1MM miles under my belt and I have been in the situation once, maybe twice in that time (and it CAN be avoided).

 

[DayTrippin]

Good for you. As for miles driven I did that many on a motorcycle. Cars, definitely more. Miles driven has no real bearing on the problem at hand.

My commute is almost impossible to avoid the blind intersections unless I go several minutes every day and puts me in worse traffic if I do. no FUD here. I lived with my S for 13 months so far. this isn't a hypothetical, it is a real world situation I experience every day.

Another way to look at it is to look at it flip around the situation. I suppose you’re backing out into the street, and suddenly you see traffic coming. To try and engage forwy from reverse is not fast, nor can it be done without taking your attention away from the road. How many of you have back onto a road with maybe not a very good line of sight to traffic that might be coming your way?